This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

The day Linda Sepp had dreaded arrived with a knock at the door at 10 a.m. Tuesday.

The 50-year-old woman with chemical sensitivities was roused from her sleep by enforcement officers from the sheriff’s office. After a four-year eviction battle, they had come to throw her out of her High Park apartment.

Four enforcement officers dressed in white haz-mat coveralls and face masks — meant to keep Sepp safe from them should they have worn cologne or washed their hair with strong shampoo — hauled the woman’s possessions onto the front porch. From there, her 82-year-old father lugged bags and boxes down a flight of steps to her car.

“I’m beyond panicked. I’m blank. I’m numb,” said Sepp, who has Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS), a condition that causes rashes, headaches and burning sensations when she is exposed to chemicals in the environment.

She wore filthy clothes held together by safety pins. She can’t wash them, she explained, because detergents and city tap water pose too much of a threat.

Article Continued Below

Numerous attempts have been made to find her a new place to live. The developer who plans to demolish the block has offered her four different homes but all were too toxic for her.

More attempts to find Sepp accommodation were made on Tuesday by the city’s shelter support and housing office. She was offered a second-floor unit in a nearby Toronto Community Housing Complex. With Sepp’s beat-up Toyota Tercel loaded with her possessions, her father drove her to the unit.

Twice she tried to enter, both times retreating in tears. “I can’t go in there. I can’t go up those stairs,” she cried. She said the hallway smelled of fabric softener and, indeed, there was a perfumed scent.

Curious neighbours and passersby gawked at the scene. Both Sepp and her father were now also in haz-mat suits. While Sepp wept, two city officials offered another alternative — a homeless shelter in Scarborough.

Back in the car, the pair headed to the east end, to a family shelter that had once been a motel. But this, too, was fruitless. The room she was offered smelled of smoke.

“It’s like shooting pins through my head,” she cringed.

Sepp’s eviction battle began in 2006 after WJ Properties purchased the house in which she rented a flat. They had also bought 12 neighbouring properties with plans to redevelop the site.

The entire block of homes has been boarded up, save for 1884 Bloor W., which Sepp has called home for 19 years. In recent years, she has rarely left the apartment because she can’t tolerate exposure to chemicals.

Dr. Lynn Marshall, Sepp’s physician and an expert in environmental sensitivities, told an eviction hearing at the Landlord and Tenant Board a year ago that these symptoms are consistent with MCS, fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. The medical community is divided on MCS with some detractors arguing it is symptomatic of mental illness. But the Ontario Human Rights Commission recognizes it as a medical condition.

In April last year, the Landlord and Tenant Board sided with WJ Properties, but ordered that the eviction be postponed for a year, giving Sepp more time to find a home. The board acknowledged that the developer had tried to accommodate Sepp by offering to spend up to $200,000 to buy her a house somewhere in the province and rent it back to her for $500 a month.

At the last stop on Tuesday, city officials apologized, saying they had done the best they could.

Now, Sepp was on her own. “I feel abandoned,” she said.

Living with her father isn’t an option because he lives in a condo she can’t tolerate.

She considered spending the night under the trees in High Park but changed her mind when it started to rain.

Instead, she has opted to camp out in her car in the dusty parking lot of a Buddhist temple in the west end.

Even though it’s beside a mound of garbage bags and a construction site, she says it’s the lesser of many evils.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com